Nose Cone Design: An Overview for Aerospace Engineers

[Astronuc]

I stumbled across this while looking for something else.

This might be of interest to AE's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nose_cone_design

 

[Hawknc]

Is there anything Wikipedia doesn't have these days? ;) Very nice, though, I've never seen that topic covered in much detail.

 

[Clausius2]

It's a pity they don't mention anything about the influence of the shape on the flow field. That's a nice analytical problem. Sometimes in AE one has to work out the shape of the cone that has produced a particular flow field (inverse design).

 

[FredGarvin]

Most of the time in our area, we are more concerned with simply not creating any disturbances in the inlet flow rather than creating a particular flow field. I can't say what method our aero guys use to determine our nose cone profiles.

 

[Clausius2]

Hi Fred,

In my opinion the inverse design is nicer, isn't it? It's like the pure state of the predictive force of the theory. But I know sometimes it is cheaper and more suitable for companies the test-and see what happens afterwards- method.

 

[FredGarvin]

Claus...I totally agree. Most times, for us, it ends up being a scaled version of a design that has been around for quite sometime. Then it's a cross your fingers and hope it still works kind of moment. We have had to do new shapes, but not very often.